


maybe that makes me a fool

by taizi



Category: All For The Game - Nora Sakavic
Genre: Childhood Trauma, Fluff and Hurt/Comfort, Gen, Healing, Implied/Referenced Homophobia, Platonic Relationships, alternatively: the one where neil and nicky dance with each other a lot
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-01-01
Updated: 2019-01-01
Packaged: 2019-10-01 21:48:46
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,814
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17251994
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/taizi/pseuds/taizi
Summary: Neil isn’t Erik, and he isn’t Stuttgart, he isn't any of those people or places and he couldn’t ever be them, but he’s here. He’s waiting for Nicky to get up and dance with him. He’s still holding out a hand.





	maybe that makes me a fool

Neil approaches after practice, when Nicky’s hanging on by a thread. His red hair is still wet from the shower, shirt damp and sticking to his body like he dried off in a hurry and did a half-assed job, and he’s watching Nicky like he can see right through him.

That’s not a good thought.

“And what can I do for you?” Nicky says, making sure he sounds as cheerful as he should. The one good thing about living with explosive personalities is that Nicky doesn’t even really have to try to fade into the background. It just happens. On days like this-- when memory pushes too close to the happy surface-- he’s grateful that most people don’t look too hard past face value.

But Neil Josten has never been most people. He wouldn’t even know how to be.

He hesitates, and then sinks down onto the bench beside Nicky, like he’s picking his way through a minefield. A juggernaut when it comes to everything but this. He’s so clueless, Nicky thinks, heart swelling. It’s an affection that pushes through the brittle exhaustion Nicky’s been dragging around behind him all day, and his smile settles, more honest.

Neil notices the shift, because of course he does. He gathers himself, as though he needs every spare ounce of courage he can get his hands on, and Nicky has a moment to find worry, to think maybe this is something serious--

And then Neil says, “Will you teach me how to dance?”

Nicky doesn’t have an immediate answer for that.

He blinks, and blinks again, and wonders if he misheard somehow. But the locker room is very empty around the two of them, nothing but the sound of dripping water from the showers and the muted PA system in the outside hall warbling about some student life reminder, and Neil’s voice was pretty clear.  

He’s let the question hang for too long. Neil doesn’t shift his feet or fidget, but his eyes drop about an inch so he’s staring at Nicky’s cheek instead of meeting his gaze.

And the thing about Neil is that he’s a hard person for Nicky to say no to on a good day, and not for the same reason most gorgeous guys are. It’s just that Neil so very rarely asks for anything at all that when he does it feels like progress. Like a step in the right direction. Even if it’s something Nicky would hate, he would probably say yes. And in this case?

“Of course, buddy!” Nicky says, maybe too loud, beaming to make up for the wait. “You came to the right place. I’m obviously the best dancer you know. Only what’s the occasion? ‘Cause we’ve gone clubbing about a hundred times and I’ve seen at least four separate hotties ask you to dance four separate times and you didn’t even pretend to be interested.”

Something in the line of Neil’s shoulders relents, a tension Nicky couldn’t even pick out until it goes away. He smiles crookedly, a pretty little number that only the Foxes ever get to see. The scars on his face stretch with it, pulled on one side and puckered on the other, and somehow that’s pretty too.

“No occasion,” says Neil. He looks too relieved for that to be true. "You always seem to have a good time, so I figured it's worth a try." 

 

* * *

 

Neil’s a natural athlete, hyper aware in an innate way of-- of _form,_ and energy, and space, and motion, and what to do with your limbs and your core when you’re in the middle of all that, but it’s obvious he hasn’t danced a day in his life.

“Would this be easier if I put a racquet in your hand?” Nicky teases, rearranging Neil’s posture for the third time. He’s a willing student but a hapless one, pliant under Nicky’s patient hands. “Maybe we could gear up and practice on the court.”

“It would be worth it just to see Kevin’s face,” Neil says. It sounds like he’s only half-joking. Nicky grins at him.

It’s been a bad day, but not a Bad Day. Since the nightmare that woke him with a racing pulse and a hammering heart and sweaty hair slicked to his forehead, Nicky has managed to keep a firm grasp on his thoughts, refusing to let them slide away into dangerous territory.

 _“Just a little sting,”_ the nightmare doctor said the day Nicky learned about electroconvulsive therapy, with a smile on his face he probably thought was kind. _“Just a little sting to teach you those thoughts are wrong. You want to get better, don’t you? So you can go home?”_

No. Nope. Nicky shuts that down before it can go any further. He’s miles and miles and years and years away from that fucking camp, those fucking _professionals,_ the other teenagers with their glassy, traumatized eyes and shaking hands.

He bundles up in a hoodie he stole from Erik on Erik’s last visit, and he buries his nose in the collar to chase the ghost of his boyfriend’s body spray when he thinks he’s about to spiral, and hitches on a grin for everyone that greets him in the halls. It feels like he’s dragging an anchor around behind him with every weary step, but he gets by.

If there’s one thing Nicky’s good at, it’s getting by.

Neil’s hands drift into his line of vision. They land on Nicky’s hips and tug him a step closer. It’s not flirtatious in the least, Neil’s expression a study in determination, like dancing with his friend is a test he needs to pass in order to keep playing the sport he’d lay down and die for. His blue eyes are _too much,_ focused on Nicky from a hands width away.

And Nicky’s laugh is surprised out of him. He drapes his arms over the shorter boy’s shoulders, and that psychiatrist that hurt him and that place that scarred him are the furthest things from his mind.

“Who are you and what have you done with my cute baby Neil?” Nicky says, faux-stern. “I tried to give him a hug the other day and he looked like he didn’t even know arms could do that. And now this?”

“This is what you’ve been teaching me,” Neil protests. “This is what you told me to do.”

Matt finds them there an hour later, music loud enough to rattle the glass in the window with every beat, leading each other around in circles that started out uncertain and eventually smoothed into something familiar. Nicky is laughing, Neil is scowling down at his uncooperative feet, and Matt puts his bag on the couch with a grin and doesn’t ask.

 

* * *

 

It’s two days after that first impromptu dance lesson, an hour and a half after a practice game with a local community college, and thirteen minutes after Nicky locked himself in his dorm that he finally lets go.

It’s two o’clock in the morning in Germany, and Nicky doesn’t want to call Erik and wake him up over something so stupid, something like the exhausted f slur from a meathead striker on a nobody Exy team that he’ll never see again. Nicky has heard it before, has heard worse, has heard it from his own family.

But maybe that nightmare still has its hands on him, because Nicky can’t help but let it hurt. His thick skin gives way like paper melting under rain, and he buries his face in his hands and digs fingers into his hair and falls apart.

He remembers being in high school and drowning every single day, tiptoeing around his parents, forcing himself to bring a girl home so his mom would smile, crying into his pillow at night because he didn’t know what the fuck was wrong with him. He remembers the single-minded way he _ran_ to Germany, so desperate for literally anything else that he’d rather live with strangers in a foreign country for a year than go home for another day.

He’s so different from that boy now that things like this shouldn’t still be able to touch him. He should be able to float above it all, after everything else he’s been through.

The locked outer door gives a defeated _click_ and swings open on squeaky hinges, and someone steps into the living room.

“Nicky?” It’s Neil. Of course it is. He just broke in.

“One of these days you’re going to teach me that,” Allison’s voice follows imperiously, because at some point when no one else was looking those two became partners in crime.

“You’d have too much power. Give the rest of us a fighting chance.”

Allison’s voice doesn’t come any closer, but one set of footsteps does, and the quiet knock on the doorframe is all Neil.

“Nicky?” he says. “You were supposed to meet us at the mall.”

Fuck. Well, that explains the little B&E. Neil usually doesn’t lockpick his way into places without a good reason or at least a decent excuse. Nicky sits up and scrubs his face with the heels of his hand, knowing he has about ten seconds before Neil gets tired of waiting on the other side of the door.

“Can you believe I completely forgot?” Nicky says, all harmless and whoopsy-daisy. “I got back and just totally crashed, man.”

There’s a beat of silence, Neil chewing this response over in his head, and then he says, “Can I come in?”

It’s on the tip of Nicky’s tongue to say no, but what comes out is, “If you want.” Because he’s not his cousins, he doesn’t like to drag himself into a corner and lick his wounds. If someone he likes is an arm’s length away Nicky will at least try to reach out for comfort. He doesn’t _like_ being alone, for all that most of his life has been a lonely one.

Neil comes in and closes the door behind him. He looks at Nicky like this is exactly how he expected to find him, rumpled and hollow-eyed and only just barely not crying anymore. He crosses the room and kneels on the floor in front of Nicky’s seat on the edge of his bed and says, “What do you need?”

God, it’s no wonder Andrew fell in love with this kid. They all kind of did. Nicky’s smile for him is a knee-jerk thing, half-hearted but the half that managed is honest.

“It’s just a bad brain day,” Nicky says, patting the bed beside him. “You don’t have to beat anyone up for me.”

“I think I’d leave that to Dan,” Neil replies smartly, but he does get up and come sit beside him. He sits so they’re pressed together, thigh and side and shoulders, a warm line of contact and company and not-alone. “Do you want to talk?”

Nicky sometimes wonders how Neil knows what to say. His whole body is evidence of the life he’s lived. No one was ever kind or courteous to him, but Neil never takes what he could ask for instead. Never pushes against a _no._ Sure, he broke into the dorm, but he knocked on the bedroom door.

And somehow, because it’s Neil, Nicky says, “I had a bad dream about a bad thing that happened and I can’t shake it off.”

“What do you usually do? When you can’t shake it off.”

But there’s no usually. Sometimes he can call Erik, sometimes he can’t. Sometimes his cousins are around and agreeable enough that he can soak up their company, and sometimes they slam their doors in his face. Sometimes he just crawls into bed and pulls the covers up over his head and waits it out.

So Nick gives Neil’s shoulder a playful nudge and says, “This helps. Thanks, Neil.”

Neil nods seriously, looks like he’s committing something to memory, and then pats down Nicky’s pockets for his phone.

“Hey, woah-- look, I’m flattered, but I have a husband.”

“Shut up.” Neil maneuvers through Nicky’s music app with all the authority of someone who has literally never used a music app before in his life, swiping through songs until he settles on one he recognizes. “You played this the other day,” he says, victorious. “When we danced.”

“If you can call it dancing,” says Nicky without heat. Then he blinks, mirth falling into confusion, because Neil is on his feet and facing him and holding out a hand. “What, are you-- seriously?”

Synth-pop fills the room, upbeat and infectious, and Neil is still holding out a hand.

And Nicky….

Nicky misses Erik.

Nicky misses Stuttgart and their apartment and the cafe at the end of the street and their neighbor’s stupid dog. He misses his friends and double date nights and how Erik’s mom always kissed him on the forehead when she came over for lunch. He misses being around people who like him, who don’t just put up with him because they’re stuck together, who bother him at work and blow up his phone.

He doesn’t regret coming back for his cousins for a _second,_ he may have done a shitty job of giving them a better life than the one they had before, but he did everything he could. He’d do it again. But sometimes he has a bad day, and sometimes he wants to go _home._

He wants to climb into bed and wake up to Erik’s arms around him, where creeping nightmares won’t dare try to linger past the morning. He wants to be where he’s always been safe.

Neil isn’t Erik, and he isn’t Stuttgart, he isn't any of those people or places and he couldn’t ever be them, but he’s here. He’s waiting for Nicky to get up and dance with him. He’s still holding out a hand.

“Well, it _is_ a pretty good song,” Nicky says. "Be a shame to let it go to waste." It would probably pass for a joke if his voice wasn’t so thick and wobbly. He takes Neil’s hand and lets Neil pull him up.

“I think,” Neil says, “that home is supposed to be hard to leave.” His words are very careful, the way they always are when he’s not picking fights with Exy superstars on national television or backliners twice his size during virtually any game. “That’s the point, isn’t it? That’s how you know. If I had to leave all of you for five years-- I couldn’t imagine."

Nicky winds him closer, props his cheek on those auburn curls, and says, “Hey, your home is transitory. You know we’re never leaving you.”

“So’s yours,” is the stubborn reply. Nicky has to stare really hard at the wall and swallow a few times before he can speak again.

"Why'd you really ask me to teach you?" 

"I already said," Neil tells him simply. "You always have a good time when you're dancing. You haven't been okay lately. I thought doing something that made you happy might help."

 

* * *

 

The next time they drive out to Eden's, Neil takes a few shots with the rest of them. He's in clothes that Allison bought that Andrew approves of, if the hand he slipped into Neil's back pocket while they waited at the bar for drinks was any indication. Neil's scars are lesser in the shifting colors and strobing lights, and maybe he'll never really like being looked at, but he's a little less self-conscious here. 

"I'm only dancing with you," Neil says severely, as though it's up to Nicky to make sure the rest of the club-goers keep their hands to themselves. Considering Andrew is here, watching with those sharp hazel eyes from his misleading slouch at the table, and Nicky has absolutely no doubt that the first person to even look at Neil in a way he doesn't like will find a knife tucked against their ribs in warning faster than they can say "oh shit," he's not overly worried about this responsibility. 

But he still says, "Sure, buddy." 

Allison shifts in her seat and lifts an ankle clear over the table, to display the six inch stiletto heel strapped to her foot. "These aren't just a fashion statement, Josten," she says primly. 

Kevin looks between the three of them in drunken confusion. Andrew's mouth twitches, just barely, and he moves to help Neil out of his jacket. By the time Neil slides out of the booth, Nicky is waiting for him. 

As if on cue, a familiar tune starts to swing through the speakers, and Neil lights up. 

"Nicky," he says, all surprised delight, "it's our song!"

Nicky doesn't know whether the ache in his chest is the beginning of laughter or tears, but he grins through it, whatever it is, and keeps Neil as close as he can for every minute of the night that belongs to them. 

**Author's Note:**

> nicky's one of those characters i knew i'd love the second he appeared on the page
> 
> [their song](https://youtu.be/HqiuqX-AMsA) !


End file.
